Experience

University of Utah

• United States
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• PhD Candidate

  • Aug 2018 - Present

  Advisor: K-T Varley, PhD As a current Ph.D. student, I am working to elucidate the epigenetic and transcriptional regulation of the MHCII pathway in triple-negative breast cancer using precision epigenetic editing (CRISPRa and CRISPRi) and high-throughput, integrative genomics analyses such as RNA-seq, ATAC-seq, single cell multiome ATAC + gene expression, ChIP-seq, and HiChIP. Advisor: K-T Varley, PhD As a current Ph.D. student, I am working to elucidate the epigenetic and transcriptional regulation of the MHCII pathway in triple-negative breast cancer using precision epigenetic editing (CRISPRa and CRISPRi) and high-throughput, integrative genomics analyses such as RNA-seq, ATAC-seq, single cell multiome ATAC + gene expression, ChIP-seq, and HiChIP.



Mayo Clinic

• United States
• Hospitals and Health Care
• 700 & Above Employee

• Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP) Fellow

  • Jul 2016 - Jun 2018

  Advisor: Robin Patel, MD Utilized DNA-based whole genome sequencing to directly detect and identify prosthetic joint pathogens in synovial fluid. Developed a novel filtering strategy to distinguish true infection from low-level contaminating DNA incorporating thresholds for read count, percentage of total bacterial reads, and percent of genome coverage. Oral presentation delivered at Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) conference IDWeek 2017, San Diego, CA, USA, October 4-8, 2017; "Direct Detection and Identification of Prosthetic Joint Pathogens in Synovial Fluid (SF) by Metagenomic Shotgun Sequencing" Oral presentation delivered at American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Microbe conference 2018, Atlanta, GA, USA, July 7-11, 2018; "Evaluation of Shotgun Metagenomics for Direct Detection and Identification of Prosthetic Joint Pathogens in Synovial Fluid" Poster presentation at American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Microbe conference 2018, Atlanta, GA, USA, July 7-11, 2018; "Evaluation of Shotgun Metagenomics for Direct Detection and Identification of Prosthetic Joint Pathogens in Synovial Fluid" Poster presentation at American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Microbe conference 2018, Atlanta, GA, USA, July 7-11, 2018;"Analysis of Torque Teno Viruses As A Novel Biomarker in Prosthetic Joint Infection (PJI)"



University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• United States
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• Undergraduate Research Assistant

  • Oct 2015 - Jun 2016

  Advisor: Jason Ridlon, PhD Investigated putative genes encoding the enzyme bile acid 7α-dehydratase and their relative activity in converting host primary bile acids into toxic, secondary bile acids Poster presentation delivered at the Undergraduate Research Symposium at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, April, 2016. "Cloning, overexpression, purification and characterization of putative bile acid 7α-dehydratases from Clostridium leptum and Clostridium sordellii in Escherichia coli".